Chamber and committees

The cost of the research study, Changing Speeding Behaviour in Scotland: An Evaluation of the 'Foolsspeed' Campaign, was £81,700.42.

In addition to the evaluation of the 2001 Know the Score activities, Lambda Research and Consultancy has undertaken studies covering:(a) business-related bankruptcies in Scotland;(b) policy making in civil justice;(c) dealing with sex offenders in Scotland;(d) social inclusion partnership and Pathfinder projects involving public access to the internet;(e) the experiences and aspirations of rural and retained firefighters, and(f) the creation of a rural community gateway website.The Crown Office has also commissioned Lambda Research and Consultancy to undertake an evaluation of the Pilot Victim Liaison Service in Grampian and Hamilton, and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary has commissioned the company to undertake a study into Family Liaison Officers.

Aberdeenshire Council's original intention was to develop an internet portal for people aged 65 and over. However, the scope of the project has changed and instead of this the council will, with £100,000 from the Modernising Government Fund, examine the use, and interest in using ICT, by over 65s as part of Aberdeenshire's strategy for older people, Live Life to the Full. The council has chosen the Marr area as a suitable pilot area for this project.The Executive is supporting internet developments for older people and the Scottish Executive's Older People's website: www.scotland.gov.uk/olderpeople, was established on 29 August 2002. The website was designed with input from older people and early trials show an average of 3,500 visits per month. Steps are now under way to further publicise and develop the site.

Aberdeenshire Council will measure the level of success of the project and the extent to which it has enabled older people to use ICT to improve access to services. The main aim of the project is to take technology out to older people in a rural setting and to work with older people to determine how technology might improve access to services. The project is at an early stage and the criteria used for measuring success will be based upon usage of the service and feedback on the technology by older people themselves.I understand that the Project Co-ordinator has enlisted a number of volunteers and that technology training has been provided in four areas using portable computers. This includes a number of introductory sessions and short training courses run, for example, in sheltered housing complexes and in day-care settings. Residents and users in a sheltered housing complex/resource centre are also participating in a series of one to one classes covering the basics of using a computer, word processing, email and internet. In addition, an outreach project has been developed to work in people's homes and training for this will commence shortly.The initial work of the pilot has proved popular and the council already intends to extend the project until September 2003. Over that time the council will explore ways to extend the life of the project and the area that it covers to ensure the evidence gathered is representative of older people in AberdeenshireThe Executive monitors all Modernising Government Fund projects on a quarterly basis and all progress reports, including the Aberdeenshire project, are posted for public information, to the 21st Century Government Section of the website at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/government/c21g/fund.asp.

The number of hits on the site since its introduction in May 2002 is 199,970. However, given the opinion of the National Audit Office, in their report on government web sites, that hits is not a reliable way to measure activity, we monitor the site using figures relating to page impressions. Page impressions measure the number of actual pages a user views on the site. Since its introduction and to the end of October 2002, there have been 122,615 page impressions viewed on the M74 Completion website - monthly figures are shown in the following table. We had no projections of how many page impressions the site would attract as there were no precedents to benchmark against.Page Impressions 2002

May	21,025
June	11,826
July	12,632
August	15,523
September	25,776
October	35,833

The Do a Little, Change a Lot website: www.dochange.net, was redesigned and re-launched on 2 September to coincide with the new phase of the campaign. The site had 2,378 hits in its first month. No pre-launch projections were made. The previous version of the site had around 19,800 hits from September 2001 to August 2002.

The Scottish Executive Education Department began receiving website statistics in February 2001. Since then the total number of recorded hits to the home page of the Children's Hearings website is 25,266 and to the entire site is 310,706.Statistics were not routinely collected on a monthly basis until November 2001. The following table gives details of monthly figures from then. No pre-launch projection of the number of hits was carried out prior to set-up of the site.

Month	Hits for Home Page	Successful Hits for Entire Site
November 2001	851	9,533
December 2001	640	6,581
January 2002	955	11,517
February 2002	876	10,280
March 2002	2012	24,001
April 2002	2963	35,173
May 2002	4230	49,063
June 2002	5201	60,349
July 2002	1056	12,169
August 2002	1720	23,584
September 2002	2,209	36,868
Total	22,713	279,118

The National Debate on Education website was launched on 20 March 2002. Since then, there have been approximately 21,000 hits to the homepages for the Discussion and Reflection stages of the Debate.Figures for the number of hits per month are displayed in the following table.The National Debate is a new approach to consultation and we had no comparable information on which to base a pre-launch projection of the number of hits.

Period	Number of Hits
20-03-2002 to 29-04-2002	4,246
30-04-2002 to 27-05-2002	3,860
28-05-2002 to 24-06-2002	3,865
25-06-2002 to 29-07-2002	1,472
30-07-2002 to 26-08-2002	445
27-08-2002 to 30-09-2002	692
01-10-2002 to 28-10-2002	6,626

The National Grid for Learning web services received 3,018,233 hits during the period October 2000 to October 2002. Figures are not available for the initial period of 2000 when the site was under development. A detailed breakdown of hits since the initial set up of the NGfL is given in the following table.There were no pre-launch projections made in relation to the NGfL website, since its use was heavily dependent on related initiatives, such as the roll-out of the NGfL infrastructure and hardware and New Opportunities Fund training for teachers.Table showing total number of hits on the NGfL Scotland web services for the period October 2000 to October 2002:

Period	Successful Hits For Entire Site	Average Hits Per Month
11-10-00 to 31-12-00	75,487	25,162
01-01-01 to 31-03-01	115,110	38,370
01-04-01 to 30-06-01	157,703	52,567
01-07-01 to 30-09-01	197,091	65,697
01-10-01 to 31-12-01	403,641	134,547
01-01-02 to 31-03-02	531,284	177,095
01-04-02 to 30-06-02	502,688	167,652
01-07-02 to 30-09-02	883,349	294,449

The website is managed by Scottish Property Network (SPN) who regularly analyse site activity using the proprietary WEBTRENDS software.The total and monthly number of hits on the Scottish Executive public sector property website are shown in the following table. However, as National Audit Office (NAO) guidelines recommend that the number of page impressions or number of user sessions may be a more reliable indication of website traffic, these figures are also provided.

		May	June	July	Aug	Sep	Oct	Total
WebtrendsAnalysis	Hits to Entire Site (successful)	9,043	12,618	27,631	45,152	47,804	36,099	178,347
	Page Impressions	4,060	6,525	13,683	21,023	20,652	16,086	82,029
	Visits (User Sessions)	853	1,706	2,229	4,196	5,410	4,146	18,540

There were no pre-launch projections of numbers of hits. The success criterion for the site is an assessment at the end of the three-year pilot period through consulting the major public sector participants on how useful a marketing tool it is to them.